I’m not sure when teacher gifts became another hot item on the December stress list. I have vague memories from my childhood of carrying to school homemade shortbread on paper plates, wrapped in green or red cellophane. A generic message on a cardboard tag. How quaint those festive footnotes seem now. What cheapskates we were then.
There are probably rules about buying presents for teachers. Legally binding rules that prevent government employees from accepting gifts above a certain value. But when it comes to end-of-year gifts for professionals who have probably spent more of the year with our children than we have, those rules – if they do exist – matter less than the more informal and bewildering rules of social niceties, gratitude and, yes, guilt.
The question of how much to spend on your child’s teacher is very much tied to how much we value education. And, for that matter, how embarrassed we are that our culture seems to value educators so little.
There can’t be many parents who don’t want their children to grow up well-rounded, happy and successful. Odd then that, for 11 months of the year (aside from a couple of days scattered throughout – a birthday or World Teacher’s Day), we give so little thought to the people tasked with the job of making that sort of growth happen.
A friend who sent her kids to a Montessori school said that, on arriving at the school, the principal explained that there were two kinds of parents: those who would be deeply involved in the life of the school and those who preferred to throw money at it.
The same seems true at our local state school. I suspect most of us – time poor parents juggling full-time work, after-school activities and the general admin of organising a small and unruly rugby team – tend to fall into the latter camp. At year’s end, we are faced with a creeping sense that we could and should have done more. Working parents are, I feel, susceptible to feeling this way about pretty much everything.
This is the real reason cellophane and shortbread are off the Christmas list. Who has time to bake? (Can you even still buy coloured cellophane?) If you can’t make something meaningful, the only option is splash out. To buy stuff. We spend more when the guilt is high and inspiration is low.
I suspect this explains the competitiveness from some parents when it comes to the Christmas gifts. Gift-giving can be a kind of performative penance. Just this week a teacher friend admitted she had been given – from a single student – a bottle of perfume worth $350. (I quietly wondered if and when the student’s mother would miss it.)
What do teachers actually want at Christmas? No matter how guilty the parent body might be or how grateful they are, there is only room in a teacher’s life for so many novelty mugs, boxed chocolates and overpriced soaps.
My teacher friend admitted she was grateful for the modern trend of the pooled present, when parents send cash to a chosen representative, who can invest in a single splendid gift. Goodbye 20 mugs, hello luxury hamper. But even this approach has its limits.
For two years I was a “class parent” – a volunteer who helps with bridging the gap between the class teacher and the parents – and tasked with the annual job of finding a suitable present. It was not a natural fit for me. Finding a meaningful, if modest (but not too modest) gift for someone I barely knew (but should know better), on behalf of time-tight (but cash-incontinent) parents seemed a riddle to fox a sphinx. One teacher had her birthday a fortnight before Christmas and it nearly broke me.
There is no getting around the cliche that it is, in the end, the thought that matters. Even if that thought is an acknowledgment of the 11 months of thoughtlessness preceding it. As parents we might know less than we would like about our children’s teachers, but those children – when engaged by an adept educator – tend to know everything that matters. What makes a teacher laugh. What books they read. Which football team they follow.
The key to a meaningful present is not to stress or overthink it but to be guided by the kids and their love for that other adult who has invested so much energy in them over the year. (Admittedly, our youngest tried to insist her teacher really wanted Schleich horses for Christmas, so it’s not a foolproof system.)
The socials might be full of teachers complaining about inappropriate gifts of lingerie or a T-shirt with your child’s face on it but most teachers I know tend to talk more about the small gestures of connection. The scrawled message on a homemade Christmas card. A bauble made in design and tech. A carefully chosen bunch of favourite flowers. Evidence of the imprint their hard work and care leaves on their charges.
I mean, they say that. But I was a teacher myself, a long time ago, and, sure, a compliment is great but caring that much about so many kids for so many months is bloody exhausting. It’s Christmas. Keep your homemade biscuits. Bring on the wine and book vouchers.
Myke Bartlett is a writer and critic who has taught courses on creativity and happiness
